July 24th, 2009
Have you heard about this? It was a hot idea in about the nineties and is now a mere shadow of its former self, and thank goodness. The basic idea is this: intelligence takes many forms, including kinetic intelligence (dancers), practical intelligence (woodworkers), and the like. The traditional conception of intelligence as brain smarts is merely one form.
I translate it like this: Whatever you’re good at, we’ll call that intelligence.
And I call bullshit. It reeks of po-mo apologism from people with smarts who feel guilty about having something great. Here is what I think: there is nothing better than being smart. I’d rather be brilliant than a great dancer, or a great farmer, or a great fireman, or anything else at all. To name just one reason, it ’s great because it allows you to become good at basically anything else. It’s the best thing to be and I think people know it. Consider the very term, multiple intelligences. Intelligence is right in there. We don’t refer to the multiple dances, including the dance of the brain.
I’m not saying intelligence is the be all end all. There are smart assholes and wonderful, necessary people who are not smart at all. We can agree on this. But in general, most of us think it is better to have intelligence than any other ability. If it was so great to be a dancer, we wouldn’t feel the need to stroke dancers’ egos by creating something called kinetic intelligence. We’d just say “He’s a wicked dancer!” and that would be enough. But it isn’t.
Heh, little harsh.
I’m glad to hear someone who knows what they’re talking about call bullshit on multiple intelligences though! I remember my sister was doing some unit on it in second grade or something, and she came home with a profile showing her score in the multiple intelligence areas. I thought it was bullshit then, and I think it’s bullshit now. I’m happy I went through the meat grinder before they added that little pearl.
Well this is the thing: in the same way that we can say men and women are different but nevertheless must be accorded the same rights, we can say that some people are smarter than others but all of them must be accorded the same rights too. It’s not a question of who is a better human, but rather who has a particular ability that – if we are honest! – nearly everyone accords highest value.
I have no patience for insincerely trying to manage other people’s feelings. Don’t lie about a person’s abilities or talents, but also don’t devalue them for the difference.
First, I always thought that it was a way to not discourage children from learning, and to accept the fact that different people learn in different ways. Someone may not be able to add 2 and 2, but have a gift for languages. Does that make them more or less intelligent than someone who can calculate the square root of pi to 100 decimal places but has a limited vocabulary?
For myself, when I was in university, if you would look at my understanding of thermodynamics and fluid flow, you’d think I was very intelligent. If you looked at my understanding of electrical circuits, you’d think I was a moron who couldn’t be counted on to turn on a light switch without setting the building on fire.
I’m also not convinced that, as a society, we value intelligence over every other talent. Thousands of people pay $100 a pop to see people with “kinesthetic intelligence” play hockey, or someone with “musical intelligence” perform.
My impression of multiple intelligences, as it was being taught to my sister, was that it was being used as an excuse. You’re given a series of numerical values printed, in permanent ink, on a personal profile and told “you just aren’t good at math, but it’s ok because you’re good at dancing, so why don’t you just focus on that?”
I also abhor standardized or IQ tests as a matter of course for school children for the same reasons. People, and especially kids, tend to internalize the results as inescapable aspects of their personality.
Defining intelligence as one measurable and immutable thing is certainly a problem, but the solution isn’t to define it as five measurable and immutable things.
More important than ‘intelligence’, I think, is honesty, integrity and curiosity. If you don’t know a lot about a topic, that doesn’t make you stupid. If you don’t care and can’t be bothered to find out, or substitute feelings for knowledge, that’s a real problem. In this way, I think we can find plenty of value in people who may not fit the standard definition of ‘intelligent’ beyond their just being necessary.
I’d call that athletic skill.
And I highly doubt anyone would ever accuse you of being a danger to light switches.
But seriously… if you want to encourage children to learn, do so in a genuine way. Don’t make up some half baked crap about how everything that a person can do well is a type of intelligence. That’s just playing with words, in much the same way we repeatedly try to change the term for “mentally retarded” to try and reduce stigma, but alas, the stigma doesn’t come from the nomenclature, it comes from the condition. Call it anything you like and people will still make mean jokes about it. People do not actually learn in different ways. Learning is just learning, and while each person will have different areas of strength, you can’t teach calculus in an art class, nor dancing in a classroom. And overwhelmingly, people who do well in one element of the standard IQ test (WAIS) do well in the others too.
But I agree with JBrydle that IQ testing for kids is a bad idea. And really, IQ doesn’t matter much once you are about 1SD above the mean, at which point it’s effort that makes the difference for mastery of any given skill or field. But I still maintain it’s a very undesirable trait to be saddled with a low intelligence, and that as a society we value smarts.
I suspect you and I would be in agreement about needing to foster curiosity, enjoyment of learning, and good work habits as the primary (ideal) functions of school.